Me too. How anal is that? Jars and unbreakables first, bread and crisps and whatever last.
In Ireland, the Superquinn chain bags your stuff as a customer service gimmick, but nowhere else does it - though they do have occasional charity bagging: some kid bags your stuff (usually totally incompetently), and you drop a couple of coins in the bucket for their dance school or whatever.
The subject is even more fraught here because it’s now the norm to bring your own bag or container to the supermarket to reduce litter, so a bagger might be packing stuff into a rucksack full of your personal possessions, or a cardboard box, or whatever.
Here in Minneapolis, there’s a couple of chains of large grocery stores where you’re expected to bag your own - there aren’t any baggers at all.
Tho’ I think I mystified the cashier at my small hometown grocers when I bagged my own. I was with my mom and there wasn’t any bagger, and I could have them bagged and ready to go by the time mom paid. Speeded things up, but I think I shocked the cashier because it’s just not done and she expected to have to do it.
I worked as a cashier for a yr and now work in the cash office of a grocery store. The cashiers here pack as they go. It’s expected and most are fairly decent. Head office sent us a training video on how to pack but no one signed up for the voluntary viewing…hehe.
My only peeve was perfectly capable customers who don’t load the groceries into the cart as we pack instead wasting time standing there. Yes some people have problems lifting but not that many. I watched a big strapping gentleman stop his teenager from loading their cart saying. “No, might as well let the cashier do it”. Uh, gee how nice of you sir.
At all the stores around here, the cashier monopolizes the bagging racket. There is a stand in front of them where the plastic bags dispenser-rack thingies are, and they bag your groceries as the ring them up and put the bags on the counter behind them for you to pick up if you don’t have a cart. There aren’t any bags available on the counter. You’d have to reach into the cashier’s work area (not to mention their personal space!) to reach bags if you were bagging your own.
That said, one of my friends is a cashier, and she says that she appreciates it when people who bring their own bags (as I do, when I remember to) ask to bag their own. She doesn’t like handling people’s skanky bags, for one thing (not that mine are skanky; I wash them occasionally) and they can be tippy and unstable when she puts them on her little bagging platform. If you ask to bag your own, the cashier puts the grocieres on the counter and you can then shove them into your tote bags as you see fit.
Ditto for most supermarkets in Australia. The cashiers have two racks in front of them; they scan your items and immediately drop them into either bag.
Here in London, I usually have to bag my own groceries. If I’m doing a big shop, I bring a backpack and throw all cans and heavy items into that. The cashier functions are reduced to giving a surly greeting, scanning your items and taking your money (and they get to sit down too!)
I went to Norway on the weekend and paid 50 kroner (a bit less than $1) for a plastic bag (which I had to pack myself). It seems they also have a tax on shopping bags too.
I sometimes bag my own- it depends on how busy the baggers are. I don’t mind bagging my own at all. Usually once I start, someone comes and takes over, which is OK too, as this is a good time to go pay up.
Nope and I don’t feel guilty about it either. As far as I’m concerned it is part of the service. There was a place here that charged lower prices, but you were supposed to do you own bagging and I went to the competiters instead.
I’ll bag my own if no bagger is there. I used to bag (about 20 years ago) and I know what I’m doing.
The cashier will usually thank me.
When I worked as a bagger, we had several customers who demanded that they pack their own. One lady seemed to really enjoy doing it. She always got excited and started grabbing bags and items.
I prefer to do my own since I like doing it MY way, but I’m not quite as tough as my mother about telling baggers to get lost. She’ll fix them with a stern stare and say firmly, “I will do it myself, thank you.” She was a high school teacher so dealing with teenagers is her speciality. I’m still to close to that age and too shy to tell someone to get lost!
Where I live, I think the cashier and the bagger would probably drop over dead if someone tried to bag their own groceries. It’s just expected that someone will bag them for you. Not only do they bag them (and quite well, I might add!), they load them all onto a cart and bring them out to my car for me. I have not yet convinced one to come home with me and help me unload them again.
We bag our groceries most of the time as the store-provided baggers are almost entirely incompetent. Well, it’s not just the baggers that are bad, the BAGS are bad. Whether it’s a consequence of using recycled plastics or just lousy bag-making machinery, a lot of the plastic bags have holes in the seam where the heat-sealing operation didn’t form the bottom of the bag properly.
And they try to put everything into a bag, including things that are already neatly designed for carrying such as a gallon of milk, a box of laundry detergent with the built-in carrying handle, and similar things.
But, what’s really maddening is how they stubbornly refuse to put more than three items into a bag, resulting in a cart full of limp, slithery bags, and a whole lot of bags consumed for no good reason.
Oh, yeah. For some reason this is done more with plastic bags than with paper.
I seem to recall that at some time and place, it was required that everything be placed in a bag so the powers that be knew it was paid for. Then they started putting orange “paid” stickers on things like cases of soda and big boxes of detergent.
I once had a checker/bagger insist that the eggs must go in a separate plastic bag. Why? “So they won’t break.” Huh??? “How will that stop them from breaking?” I asked. She stood in bemusement for a moment and confessed that she had no idea and had never thought about it.
We do most of our supermarketing at our local Shoprite. The company has a policy of hiring retarded people for bagging and cart retrieval in the parking lot. All of these folks are up beat, happy types, and the ones working the parking lot are positively loquacious.
So recently, my wife was at the checkout counter with a little over $100 of groceries, so she had time to appreciate the scenario that followed. It seems that Jimmy (name changed) a bagboy, loves to hear Chris the cashier sing Sesame Street songs. “Would you sing ‘Rubber Ducky’, please?” Jimmy asked, and Chris sang it quietly as he scanned the groceries. Jimmy’s face lit up and he broke out in a great big smile.
With that song done, Jimmie asked for another and then another, ad infinitum, enjoying each song more than the preceding one. It was just too precious for words. My wife’s heart melted, and she quietly complemented Chris for being so nice. He took it in stride, allowing how he always had a pretty good memory for lyrics, and it kept good old Jim happy.
Later that day my Mrs. sent a note of appreciation to Shoprite’s management, singing Chris’s praises and lauding the company’s policy of hiring our less gifted folk.
The owner of the store loved her letter. He called us up, had a nice conversation first with me, then my wife, and asked for permission to read her letter to his management team that afternoon. Which she was only too happy to give.
And he sent her a Shoprite $20 gift certificate.
Oh. Yeah. I bag when I get the chance - but that doesn’t happen too often at our favorite supermarket.
I would always bag my mom’s purchases when I was a kid. Something to do and a reason to fight with my brother.
Once baggers started becoming the in thing, I was uncomfortable, because I would just stand there with my credit card, nothing to occupy me while I waited… I hate watching other people work for me when I’m capable of doing it myself.
Now either the bagger does it or Ardred does.
I like the bagger phenomenon, especially since most of the baggers at our local stores are 15 or 16 and this is their first job.
Goodness! I had no idea there was so much to say about bagging groceries. (I suppose one has to consider where one is posting… )
Antiochus, great Shoprite story! Our nearest grocery when I was growing up was a Shoprite; I still miss it.
yellowval and norinew: I’m with you on the persuade-them-to-come-home-and-put-groceries-away-for-you issue.
In reading all the replies it occurred to me that one of the culture shock items that gets me every time I go to Germany is the requirement to bag your own. I always feel like I’m in some kind of contest (think: Survivor). It’s a contest that the cashier inevitably wins.
In Mexico I think it’s the exact opposite: there’s always a bagger and they’d be either offended or appalled if I even thought about bagging my own groceries.
Our grocery chain also hires mentally handicapped. I think it’s great. Besides, most high school kids think they’re too good to do this work anyway. It gives me a bagger and gives the person a job that they enjoy doing.
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